English Speech Files

Flat
corno1979-10102006
User: corno1979
Date: 10/21/2006 10:23 pm
Views: 3855
Rating: 7

Speaker Characteristics:

Gender: male;
Age range: adult;
Pronunciation dialect: General American English;

Recording Information:

Microphone: Labtec AM-242;
Audio Card: Creative Soundblaster Audigy;
Audio Recording Software: Audacity 1.2.4;
O/S: Windows XP SP2;

File Info:

File type: wav;
Sampling rate: 48kHz;
Sample rate format: 16bit;
Number of channels: 1;

License:

Copyright (C) 2006  Greg Campbell

These files are free software; you can redistribute them and/or
modify them under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

These files are distributed in the hope that they will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

Transcriptions (i.e. the prompts file):

cc001 Well, here's a story for you: Sarah Perry was a veterinary nurse
cc002 who had been working daily at an old zoo in a deserted district of the territory,
cc003 so she was very happy to start a new job at a superb private practice
cc004 in north square near the Duke Street Tower.
cc005 That area was much nearer for her and more to her liking.
cc006 Even so, on her first morning, she felt stressed.
cc007 She ate a bowl of porridge, checked herself in the mirror
cc008 and washed her face in a hurry. Then she put on a plain yellow dress
cc009 and a fleece jacket, picked up her kit and headed for work.
cc010 When she got there, there was a woman with a goose waiting for her.
cc011 The woman gave Sarah an official letter from the vet.
cc012 The letter implied that the animal could be suffering from a rare form
cc013 of foot and mouth disease, which was surprising,
cc014  because normally you would only expect to see it in a dog or a goat.
cc015 Sarah was sentimental, so this made her feel sorry for the beautiful bird.
cc016 Before long, that itchy goose began to strut around the office like a lunatic,
cc017 which made an unsanitary mess.
cc018 The goose's owner, Mary Harrison, kept calling, "Comma, Comma,"
cc019 which Sarah thought was an odd choice for a name.
cc020 Comma was strong and huge, so it would take some force to trap her,
cc021 but Sarah had a different idea.
cc022 First she tried gently stroking the goose's lower back with her palm,
cc023 then singing a tune to her. Finally, she administered ether.
cc024  Her efforts were not futile. In no time, the goose began to tire,
cc025  so Sarah was able to hold onto Comma and give her a relaxing bath.
cc026 Once Sarah had managed to bathe the goose, she wiped her off with a cloth
cc027 and laid her on her right side. Then Sarah confirmed the vet's diagnosis.
cc028 Almost immediately, she remembered an effective treatment
cc029 that required her to measure out a lot of medicine.
cc030 Sarah warned that this course of treatment might be expensive -
cc031 either five or six times the cost of penicillin.
cc032 I can't imagine paying so much, but Mrs. Harrison - a millionaire lawyer -
cc033 thought it was a fair price for a cure.
cc034 Comma Gets a Cure and derivative works may be used freely for any purpose
cc035 without special permission provided the present sentence
cc036 and the following copyright notification accompany the passage in print,
cc037 if reproduced in print, and in audio format in the case of a sound recording:
cc038 Copyright 2000 Douglas N. Honorof, Jill McCullough & Barbara Somerville.
cc039 All rights reserved.

 

--- (Edited on 10/21/2006 8:23 pm [GMT-0700] by corno1979) ---

corno1979-10102006.zip corno1979-10102006.zip

Notice: many prompts in "English Speech Files" were adapted from the prompt files contained in the CMU_ARCTIC speech synthesis database, which were in turn derived from out-of-copyright texts from Project Gutenberg, by the FestVox project at the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

Re: corno1979-10102006
User: kmaclean
Date: 10/22/2006 12:55 pm
Views: 188
Rating: 21

Hi Greg, 

Thanks for the contribution,

Ken 

--- (Edited on 10/22/2006 1:55 pm [GMT-0400] by kmaclean) ---


Notice: many prompts in "English Speech Files" were adapted from the prompt files contained in the CMU_ARCTIC speech synthesis database, which were in turn derived from out-of-copyright texts from Project Gutenberg, by the FestVox project at the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

Re: corno1979-10102006
User: kmaclean
Date: 10/24/2006 10:32 am
Views: 177
Rating: 9

Hi Greg,

There is a hiss in the background of your recordings that I have removed using Audacity's noise removal effect.  However, if you turn up the volume higher than normal upon playback, Audacity just seems to replace the hiss with 'space age' sounds.  I'll need to experiment with Audacity's filtering to get the right approach to remove this hiss.  Is there anything in your environment that might be causing this hiss (air conditioner, computer fan, etc.)?

I've added your audio to the VoxForge svn tree and will be creating a updated acoustic model (using your speech audio) shortly - to see what kind of influence the Audacity-added (low volume) sounds have on the acoustic models.

thanks, 

Ken

--- (Edited on 10/24/2006 11:32 am [GMT-0400] by kmaclean) ---


Notice: many prompts in "English Speech Files" were adapted from the prompt files contained in the CMU_ARCTIC speech synthesis database, which were in turn derived from out-of-copyright texts from Project Gutenberg, by the FestVox project at the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

Re: corno1979-10102006
User: corno1979
Date: 10/25/2006 5:23 pm
Views: 465
Rating: 23

 

My computer fan might be noticeable. AC and fans were all off. I noticed a low-frequency hum in the recording at high volume, but I couldn't figure out what could be causing it.

I also live near a trafficky street, though I tried to record during a calmer part of the day. The "space age" sounds might be the occasional amplified car passing by. I tried to reject any samples that had obvious (to me) audible road noice.

Maybe I'll try another microphone and/or my laptop. 

--- (Edited on 10/25/2006 3:23 pm [GMT-0700] by corno1979) ---

 

--- (Edited on 10/31/2006 10:54 am [GMT-0500] by corno1979) ---


Notice: many prompts in "English Speech Files" were adapted from the prompt files contained in the CMU_ARCTIC speech synthesis database, which were in turn derived from out-of-copyright texts from Project Gutenberg, by the FestVox project at the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

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